I walked across the empty cobbled yard to the squat farmhouse that looked far older than any building I had ever seen before.
The thatch roof of the building gave the little farmhouse a quaint feel. Like I had stepped into the early 1900s before tile and slate were introduced. With walls made of irregularly shaped stones that were piled on top of each other with no concrete in sight, it wasn't hard to tell that this house had been built long ago, by hand, by the person who had lived there.
On the other side of the yard were different storehouses and barns, presumably used to store grain, tools and harvests. These looked far more modern and dwarfed the house.
Kashyap and I had split up. He was going to check the storehouses for supplies and I was going to search the house. We wanted to know if there was anybody left living here.
I wandered up to the house and without much suspense, flung open the ancient wooden door. There was no point in being nervous, I didn't expect to find anything.
Stepping through the open door, I walked down the hall on cold stone floors that were worn smooth by the passing of many feet.
The walls inside were covered in lumpy white paint that had been repainted so many times that it was nearly an inch thick in some places.
Since the house was an old bungalow, there wasn't much to it. A neat little kitchen, full of old ceramic bowls, worn down and chipped by years of use. Two bedrooms and a living room.
On the table in the kitchen, opposite a stained ceramic bowl, sat a thick black iron pot with some sort of porridge that had long turned sour. One sniff of the pungent stench coming from the pot was all it took for me to lose my appetite for the foreseeable future.
The kitchen was quiet and empty, so I moved on. The next room I went into was the living room.
Threadbare woollen carpets covered the cold stone floor of the living room. Aside from that, there was an ancient stained fireplace a small cloudy window and one wooden stool by the fireplace.
On the wall above the fireplace was a framed black and white photo of a smiling young woman. Beneath which, was a small ornate vase full of wilting wildflowers. These weren't the type you bought in a shop but the type you picked yourself in a field.
The next room I came across was an empty bedroom. Apart from the bed, which looked brand new compared to the rest of the house, the bedroom had nothing in it. 'I suppose this must have been a guest bedroom,' I thought.
I closed the door to the guest bedroom and came to the final room. The door of the last room lay ajar and a draft of cold air trickled out of the gap.
When I walked in, I immediately knew someone had died there. I was spared seeing a dead body lying in the bed like the last house we stayed in.
Instead, the way I learned that someone had died here was through the great gaping hole in the back wall of the bedroom. A cold wind blew through the massive hole, sending shivers down my spine.
The bed in this room looked lived in and worn, the blankets were made of rough warm wool, the colours of which had long faded over time. Also, the bed was destroyed, it was a wreck.
It looked like someone had hit it with a massive hammer, creating a huge dent in the middle which the bed caved in around.
Since there were no hammers big enough to do this, I could only assume that something equally large and heavy had jumped on the bed. What it did with whoever had been on the bed previously, I do not know.
Beside the bed, on a small wooden nightstand was a glass of water, an aged bible, the pages of which had turned yellowy and parchment-like aswell as a framed picture of two people smiling.
The woman in the picture was the same as the one I had seen in the living room. She was wearing overalls and had little splotches of mud covering her face. The sleeves of her patchy shirt were rolled up and she was holding a newly born lamb. On her face, was one of the brightest smiles I have ever seen.
The man with his arm around her shoulder was also grinning. His hairline was making a run for it and his tanned, leathery arms were a testament to the many long hours he had spent in the fields.
'There was only one stool in the living room, only one bowl in the kitchen,' I thought. It was quite a grim thought, but I wondered which one had died already.
I was pulled from my dark thoughts by a shout from Kashyap. Since I had already found out everything I needed to, I headed out of the house and across the cobbled yard to where he was.
Kashyap stuck his head out of a barn with thick wooden doors he had wrenched open slightly and waved to me. I walked over and slid in through the gap between the heavy wooden doors.
The gloomy barn was quiet and made me a little uncomfortable, "What did you find?" I asked to distract myself from stray thoughts and fears about what might be lurking in the shadows of the barn.
"I don't know if it's useful, but I think it's pretty cool." Kashyap's voice told me from further inside the building.
"Hold on," He said. "Can you give me a hand opening these doors, I want to get a better look at it,"
Kashyap and I grabbed hold of the heavy wooden doors and pulled back, dragging them across the ground with more than a little resistance. The hinges screamed like a tortured animal in protest, making me wonder just when the last time this door was opened was.
"If it wasn't for our increased strength, I have no idea how anyone could open this door normally," I commented.
"Ah, it's easier than you might think. We have a barn like this back in my hometown. It's only opened during harvest times so the hinges rust pretty bad throughout the year. Normally, when we need it open, we attach a rope to a tractor and just pull with that." Kashyap explained.
Finally, the door was fully opened and the soft red light from the sun streamed into the barn, blasting away the gloom and illuminating what lay within.
The barn looked like some sort of mechanics fever dream... or maybe a nightmare. Rusted farm equipment hung from hooks like coat hangers on the walls. Tens scythes and axes and spades lay in piles in the corner.
There were various thick wooden workbenches with pliers and screwdrivers lying haphazardly everywhere. On these benches were partly disassembled engines and ploughs.
What really caught my eye was a giant... thing whose shape I couldn't quite make out beneath the heavy blue tarpaulin that covered whatever it was. It was tucked away in the back of the barn behind the layers of dust and rust and abandoned tools.
"Is that what you were talking about?" I asked Kashyap while pointing towards the covered object.
"Yup, Hold on a second while I show you what it is," he said, running through the chaotic workshop like it was his own backyard.
He picked his way through the mess with the speed and grace that comes with experience. And then he hit his knee against one of the workbenches and grunted in pain with the vision you would expect to see from a man with one eye.
I didn't comment on his altercation with the bench and in no time at all, he was standing in front of the tarpaulin.
He grabbed one corner, and yanked it back, flinging the tarpaulin off the object in one great sweep that raised clouds of sawdust and splinters into the air.
When the dust settled, I was greeted by the sight of Kashyap coughing violently while leaning against an old plane.
He cleared his throat and after coughing a few more times, finally managed to speak, "It's an old cropduster. My dad used to fly one of these," He said.
"Have you ever flown one before?" I asked curiously.
"Just once, and I nearly crashed it. The hardest part was trying to land. Flying was easy enough but, stopping it from flying was an entirely different story. I doubt this one can fly though, it's too badly rusted," He said while patting one of the plane's wings affectionately.
What he said made sense. Thick orange rust crawled up from the wheels onto the body of the plane, snaking its way along seams and joints like ivy, strangling the life from the tree, or in this case the plane.
With all of the accumulated rust, It would a miracle if the wings didn't fall off when you got into the air.
Just thinking about that made me shudder involuntarily, "Good thing we are going across to France by the tunnel then," I said.
"Yeah, good thing." Kashyap agreed.